A family we all love

Ten years ago, Jeanne Birdsall introduced readers to the funny, smart, sweet-but-never-saccharine Penderwick sisters, whose initial summer adventures were followed by two additional books. This fourth installment opens five years after The Penderwicks at Point Mouette. With Rosalind away at college and Skye and Jane busy with teenage pursuits, the focus is on 10-year-old Batty, along with her stepbrother Ben and the newest Penderwick sibling, 2-year-old Lydia.

Together we'll make this work

When Bear visits a duck family one spring, they have so much fun together he decides to stay. But the ducks’ home is too small for Bear, and his ideal space is far too gloomy (and roomy) for the ducks. Can a compromise be struck? The smart money’s on finding Room for Bear.

A fairy tale gets an upscale retelling

When young Ursula Brown reaches the estate of the Vaughns (who are also recognizable as the Three Bears) to be a governess for their son, Teddy, her story becomes less a simple fairy-tale retelling and more of a mash-up of classic literary tropes.

The clues beneath his whiskered nose

There are many strange disappearances on Offley Street, from Imogen Splotts’ teddy bear to Lady Chumley-Plumley’s diamonds. And one creature has taken notice: Hermelin, a mouse that can read and write. Self-named for the cheese box in which he woke up one day, Hermelin resides in the attic of Number 33 Offley Street. Perhaps inspired by the old mysteries and Victorian garb surrounding him, the mouse sets out to find the lost items he sees on the neighborhood message board.

A crackling kitty-cat caper

Lantern Sam is a rare male calico cat who lives aboard a train called the Lake Erie Shoreliner (New York to Chicago in under 20 hours!) in the 1940s. Ostensibly in the care of conductor Clarence Nockwood, Sam is an intelligent and independent cat who has the ability to share his thoughts with some humans. Clarence is one of them, but when 10-year-old Henry Shipley comes aboard, Sam finds he can “talk” to him, too.

Foul play for Lenny and the Mikes

Lenny and the Mikes are back! After solving a baseball-related crime in Strike Three, You’re Dead, Lenny Norbeck and his friends Mike and Other Mike find themselves once again knee-deep in mystery. This time around, however, their friendship may suffer from the solving.

The sweet sounds of color

When we first meet Vasya Kandinsky in The Noisy Paint Box, he is dutifully studying math and history like “a proper Russian boy.” But when his aunt gives him a box of paints, the book’s color scheme shifts from dull blues and grays to bright reds and yellows. As a boy and later as a young man, Vasya can hear colors in a way that will later become known as synesthesia. Unlike his contemporaries, he’s not interested in painting houses or flowers or people; he wants to create works of art that aren’t supposed to be anything.

Life on the edge of war

The Tyrant’s Daughter is the existential story of a teenage girl living on the periphery of war, where she straddles the blood-soaked country she’s always called home and the new American land of bittersweet promise where she has since been exiled.